DoD News Briefing, Monday, May 3, 1999

Let me bring you up to date on a topic of great interest to you, Reserve call-ups.

Secretary Cohen has ordered another small group to be called up, 120 members of the 939th Rescue Wing, Air Force Reserve in Portland, Oregon. This will bring to the total 2,236 Reservists who have been called up so far under the Presidential Selective Reserve Call-up. Some of the other units that have been called include elements of the 117th Wing from Birmingham, Alabama, which began deploying on Saturday; the 931st Air Refueling Group from Wichita, Kansas which deployed on Saturday; the 128th from Milwaukee, the 161st from Phoenix, and the 171st from Pittsburgh will begin their deployments on Tuesday.

Q:...the Rescue Wing, yet?

Mr. Bacon: Yes.

Q: (inaudible)

Mr. Bacon: Right. Yeah.

With that, I'll take your questions or turn it over to General Wald.

Q: Ken, how about the aircraft? You still have about in effect of the 300. Any comment?

Mr. Bacon: There's been no movement on that. It's still under review, and at the appropriate time we'll move forward with it.

Q: Two more quick ones. Will helicopters move with the rescue wing, or will they simply transfer and use choppers that are there?

Mr. Bacon: I'm not aware that equipment is moving, but we'll check on that.

Major General Wald: Yes.

Mr. Bacon: They will be moving? Okay. Do you know how many?

(Inaudible response)

Major General Wald: Okay.

Q: Just one more, has the President signed the Action Order on the Apaches yet?

Mr. Bacon: I don't have anything to say on that.

Q: You mean, you say you don't have anything to say on it. You mean he hasn't or has?

Mr. Bacon: No, what I mean is that I'm not going to tell you whether he's signed it or not, because at the appropriate time the Apaches will come into use. We're not going to telegraph when they're going to be used.

Q: Can you tell us...

Q:...Reservists is that total now, with these last ones...

Mr. Bacon: 2,236, I believe. Out of the total of 33,000 cap that we've set.

Q: Can you tell us anything more about what's known now about the condition of the U.S. soldiers who were released by Yugoslavia, what their condition is now? And do you know anything more based on what you've learned since their release about the circumstances of their capture?

Mr. Bacon: First, they're still being interviewed, and the debrief probably won't be done for another two or three days. It could be less, could be more, but it usually takes about three days to complete the debrief.

Second, having said that we haven't completed the debrief, and therefore any conclusion could be subject to change, everything we've learned so far suggests that these soldiers were illegally detained in Macedonia.

Q: Are they in worse medical condition than we were led to believe from the statements from Yugoslavia?

Mr. Bacon: I think it's hard to judge right now. We know that one has had some stitches; one appears to have a leg problem; one has some bruises. But I don't think we know enough yet about the circumstances of when they got these and how they were treated. That's one of the things that will come out as the investigation continues.

Q: Are there any events, any of these problems are a result of mistreatment after they were captured, or did these things happen during the capture?

Mr. Bacon: First of all, a failure to provide adequate medical care when needed would be, I think, an example of mistreatment. But having said that, we don't know all the circumstances of the medical care yet and when these injuries were sustained.

Q: Ken, what are the circumstances of what happened on that day, what they were doing, for example? The soldiers.

Mr. Bacon: All that will come out at the appropriate time, but I don't have information on that now.

Q: Were they captured by troops...

Q: You said, Ken, excuse me, Charlie, you said that they were illegally detained in Macedonia. What evidence...

Mr. Bacon: Based on what they've told us, that's what we believe. As I said, we're still going on with the debrief, but everything we've learned so far supports that.

Now this is what General Clark said weeks ago after they were detained, and nothing has changed our view that they were illegally detained in Macedonia, but I don't have more details now. Eventually we hope to have a full rundown of what happened, but we don't at this stage.

Q: Were they detained by troops, or were they... There were reports that they might have been detained by Serbs and turned over to Serbian forces.

Mr. Bacon: They were clearly detained by Serbs. The question was what were they wearing. One report is they were detained by Arkan's Tigers, a paramilitary group, a ferocious paramilitary group. Other reports were that they could have been detained by units. But all of this will come out. They may not know exactly who detained them, but as we learn more from them, we'll have more information.

Q: Will they go home, Ken, directly after these debriefings are over? Do you know when they'll go home?

Mr. Bacon: They'll get 30 days of leave, each one of them, and I assume they'll decide to take that in the United States.

Q: That's right after the debriefings are finished, and they're...

Mr. Bacon: Yeah.

Q: Will they go back to their unit in Germany after that, or will they be reassigned here?

Mr. Bacon: My understanding is that their hope is to go back and rejoin their units.

Q: The home for their unit, we understand is in Germany. Would they then go on to Macedonia, do you think?

Mr. Bacon: I don't know how much longer their units are staying in Macedonia. I'd have to look into that. This is easy enough to find out, but I don't know. They rotate in and out.

Q: I have two questions about the electrical grid that was struck. The first is, can you tell us something about the weapon that was used against it? And secondly, why it was only on what, day 40 that it was struck? Why it wasn't struck a lot earlier, given its significance to supplying electricity to air defense or command and control, that sort of thing?

Mr. Bacon: I have nothing to say about the weapon that was used, and in terms of why it was struck, this obviously was one of the targets that was reviewed very carefully, and it was struck at what we thought was the appropriate time.

Q: What was the aircraft that was used in this?

Mr. Bacon: I'm not talking about the weapons in any way, how they were delivered or what kind they were.

Q: Can I just follow up on the question of why it was not struck earlier? I mean other than you chose to strike it when you did?

Mr. Bacon: I can tell you exactly. At the Summit the NATO leaders decided to expand the list of targets, and this was one of the target sets that was added to the list at the time.

Q: In answer to my pending question if you are ready to use your base in Incirlik, Turkey, against Yugoslavia.

Mr. Bacon: Excuse me?

Q: If you are ready to use your base in Incirlik, Turkey, against Yugoslavia.

Mr. Bacon: I don't have anything to say about using new bases at this time.

Q: Ken, what is the activity on the border in regards to the Yugoslav attacking KLA and Albanian villages? Has there been an increase in that...

Mr. Bacon: I don't think there's been an increase. There's been sporadic fighting across the border from time to time, both ways, but there are occasionally artillery rounds fired into Albania, then the UCK or the Kosovar Liberation Army will deploy from Albania out into Kosovo. This has been happening episodically from actually before Operation ALLIED FORCE began, and it continues.

Q: What about physical incursions?

Mr. Bacon: I don't have anything new on physical incursions. What is new is that there's an increased flow of refugees from Kosovo into Albania. There were 3100 yesterday. Aid workers, UNHCR and others, believe that there could be as many as 100,000 Kosovars coming into Albania in the next week or ten days, just based on the reports they're getting from other refugees and what they're seeing in terms of people lined up to come over.

Q: Why is that, Ken? Is there a campaign by the VJ or MUP to push them out of the country? Or are they just going voluntarily at this point?

Mr. Bacon: I think there are two reasons. One, there's not adequate food in Kosovo now, and you've seen press reports of people saying they're leaving because they're hungry. Also, we have continuing evidence that they're being forced out by the Special Police and by the Yugoslav army.

Q: Why is it that you can't talk about the weapon employed against the electrical system?

Mr. Bacon: Look, we have certain weapons we don't believe it's appropriate to talk about, and this is one of them.

Q: Is it a security matter, or is it a classified...

Mr. Bacon: It is highly classified, and it's not a weapon we choose to discuss publicly.

Q: Ken, the original indications were the three soldiers were picked up at a substantial distance from the border. Does it still look like that's accurate?

Mr. Bacon: That's exactly the type of detail we need to wait on until we have a full accounting of what happened.

Q: Is taking out part of the power grid and interrupting it -- at NATO this morning they indicated that it was not an attack on the Serb population, but it certainly is a massive inconvenience to the Serb population, if not an attack on them. I wonder how you square...

Mr. Bacon: First of all, it's not nearly as massive an inconvenience as what the Kosovo population is encountering from Serb troops and special police. Second, I think NATO was extremely clear this morning in explaining the military implications of this strike -- that it does confuse their command and control system; it diverts resources that might otherwise go into running the command and control system; it disorients and confuses their computers by shutting them off quickly, and we think it can have a major impact even though the duration of the electricity loss period was relatively small, approximately seven hours according to reports in the Serb press.

So it clearly does have an impact on their ability to operate efficiently.

Q: But it also has an impact on the civilian population. What would you postulate could be the impact on the civilian population vis-a-vis their attitude towards their leadership and/or NATO?

Mr. Bacon: I guess I can't psychoanalyze the Serb attitudes about this. Clearly, it should have the impact of alerting them to the fact that inconveniences like this will continue as we intensify the air campaign, and that there's one easy way to stop them, and that is to meet NATO's demands for a settlement.

Q: Can you tell us, the CSAR of the F-16 over the weekend, was that comparable in the way it was carried out to the CSAR done for the F-117...

Mr. Bacon: Yes, in two ways. It was highly professional and speedy.

Q: Going back to the electrical power grid, and you've just outlined why it's important militarily. Again, you said that NATO leaders gave them expanded authority on lists of targets. Did you not ask to do this before? Was this something that you only asked to do late in the campaign? Can you explain why that was?

Mr. Bacon: No, I cannot.

Q: Ken, there's been another...

Q: Why not? Why can't you explain that?

Mr. Bacon: We've said from the very beginning two things. One, this is a phased campaign. A systematic campaign that will grow in intensity over time, and it's done that. In order to grow in intensity, there have to be targets to which you grow which are added to the list. This was one of those targets.

There are other targets; there have been other targets, and there will be other targets in the future.

Secondly, it's also been very clear -- you've written about it; many other people have written about it -- that this is a 19-member alliance and that targets have been considered for a number of reasons throughout, and this was one of those target sets that was reviewed from the beginning. So I don't think it's surprising that a target set like this would require review, and I don't think it's surprising that we will be adding new targets as the campaign continues. That's been the history of this from the very beginning, 40 days ago. And 40 days from now we will have added significantly new targets beyond what we've struck so far.

Q: Ken, 40 days from now there won't be any people left in Kosovo. Part of the reason...

Mr. Bacon: Forty days from now...

Q:...for this whole campaign...

Mr. Bacon: I hope that 40 days from now, I hope, they'll be returning to Kosovo.

Q: Yeah, but part of the whole reason for this campaign was to stop them moving the Kosovars out of Kosovo, and now you're saying 100,000 more will be coming out this week.

Mr. Bacon: We've always said that you can't use air power to stop this type of depopulation that's taking place.

What we're trying to do is establish a set of conditions that will allow these people to go back to their homes and to live in peace and stability for a long time to come, and that's the NATO goal. It's very clear. Stop the killing in Kosovo, Serb forces out, international forces led by NATO back in, and the refugees back in to live in some sort of autonomous arrangement.

Q: Do you have any information on this second bus incident? Was that also a result of a bomb gone astray?

Mr. Bacon: We have no information on it. I talked to SHAPE just before we came in here. We've been talking to people in Vicenza. We have no information on it now. Obviously, we're continuing to look at it, but we have nothing to say at this stage.

Q: What's the status of that Serb POW being held in Germany? Is he going to be released in response to the release of the Americans?

Mr. Bacon: He'll be released at the appropriate time. He is in Germany. He's in good condition. The ICRC has been invited to visit him, and they've announced that they will talk with him on Wednesday.

I guess I should correct the record on one thing. We announced that the first Serb POW was a lieutenant. It turns out he's a private.

Q: Is he the only POW?

Mr. Bacon: There are two POWs now.

Q: What is the other one?

Mr. Bacon: I'm sorry, there [are] two enemy prisoners of war being held in Germany now.

Q: What's the rank of the other one?

Mr. Bacon: The second one is an enlisted man. I'm not certain of his rank. The first one we said was a lieutenant but in fact is a private. The second one is an enlisted person as well, and I believe he's a private.

Q: The first one was moved from Tirane to Germany?

Mr. Bacon: Right. Both were moved from Tirane to Germany.

Q: You say they'll be, or one of them will be released at the appropriate time. Is there any plan to release either or both of these men?

Mr. Bacon: All I can say is they'll be released at the appropriate time.

Q: How did we get the second? Also captured by the KLA?

Mr. Bacon: He came basically the same route, through the Albanian government.

Q: When was he captured?

Mr. Bacon: He was captured -- we discussed this on Saturday -- he was captured Friday; he was turned over to us on Friday or Saturday. He left Albania early Saturday and arrived in Germany.

Q: Do you have any other indication, what the cause of the engine malfunction, what caused the F-16 to crash? And is there any sort of pattern emerging with the recent F-16 crashes at Luke Air Force Base? Is there any common thread to these F-16 crashes, and is it a cause for concern at this point?

Mr. Bacon: Those are all extremely good questions for General Wald to answer at the end of his briefing.

Q: Let's get him up here.

Mr. Bacon: I say the same thing. Let's get him up here.

[Charts available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/#slides]

Major General Wald: I'll give the briefing first and you can ask questions later.

[Chart - Weather Conditions]

The weather, as we talked last week, has improved markedly over the last few days. There was a prediction that today, this afternoon, the weather would be bad for air ops. In fact it hasn't been. It's stayed pretty good. So over the last few days the weather has been good for air operations, and as the sortie rate has shown, we've flown a lot of sorties.

Q: How many?

Major General Wald: Yesterday they were scheduled for about 500-plus, and today they're about 600. So they're staying right around 600 every day now.

[Chart - Level of Effort Last 48 Hours - Days 39/40]

Over the last two days, over 77 different planned targets were struck. Additionally, some targets of opportunity. The predominant target was the MUP/VJ forces, about 50 percent of those out of those 77 targets; then a large percentage were mobility targets. You can see the LOCs now are being closed into Kosovo continuously. Some command and control, some more radio relays, and C2 as well as some sustainability and some SAM sites were attacked over the last two days.

[Chart - Refugees in Theater]

Quickly, into the refugees. Basically about 14,200 the last 24 hours have come out. The numbers stay about the same. There's about 25,000 that have been, are living in other countries at this time. That's the number we can count. Several of the refugees are actually living with families in both Macedonia and Albania. I think the number in Albania is actually 100,000 or so that are actually living with the families in Albania.

[Chart - Operation SUSTAIN HOPE Last 24 Hours]

Just an update on Camp Hope. Camp Hope is not really the final name for it. It's what we call it because of SHINING HOPE. It hasn't been named. Once the camp is finally finished, it will be named.

The construction continues. Right now they're looking at somewhere around the 12th or 13th where people actually move in. They're looking for a good source of water as we speak. There have been about 7,160 tents, approximately, [that] went so far. The tents for Camp Hope, about 400 are actually in country, and the other 1,600 are in Ancona ready to ship forward.

They've started to put up tents at Camp Hope; as I said, it will be named later. Then the initial refugees into Fort Dix should start coming in on Wednesday. I think there's a flight for Wednesday and Friday of about 400 each.

Q: Camp Hope is at Fier?

Major General Wald: The camp at Fier is right now named Camp Hope. That isn't the final name. It will be named later.

Mr. Bacon: I think the final name is Camp America.

Major General Wald: Has that been announced? Okay. Camp America. They haven't put the board out yet. I'll defer to Mr. Bacon on that one.

[Photos available at http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/#operation+allied+force]

I showed you a film -- not a film, but I've showed you film also, but some imagery of the Novi Sad petroleum refinery the other day. These were the major areas that I showed a couple of days ago.

[Photo - Novi Sad Petroleum Refinery, Serbia - Post Strike]

Yesterday, they struck some more of these areas here. The tanks with the red arrows were struck yesterday. I'll show you some imagery of that. You saw it on TV burning last night. I believe I have some film of that. This is actually an overhead image of that same area I just showed you. The three areas are burning. So we're taking out his storage capability as well.

So, the Novi Sad petroleum factory -- the first thing you want to do is take down the most important part. That's production. Then go back and try to get out his supply and sustainability.

[Photo - Baric Explosives Plant Prva Iskra, Serbia - Pre Strike]

[Photo - Baric Explosives Plant Prva Iskra, Serbia - Post Strike]

Baric explosive plant near Prva Iskra in Serbia itself. And this area here looks not too bad here. You can see there was some damage before, but I'll show you another image of that large area, but several probably upwards to 30 different aim points. There are just a few of them I'll show you here that have been taken out. And methodically, we're starting to take out his ability to have any of his facilities sustain any type of ammunition production or supply.

[Photo - Pec TV & FM Transmitter, Kosovo - Post Strike]

This is the Pec TV, FM transmitter and TV area. There's an antenna here, if you look closely, that's not standing anymore, laying there. And there are three areas in here -- one building, an antenna, and another support building -- and that's pretty much a black hole right now. It's shut down.

[Photo - Vranjc Army Garrison, Kosovo - Post Strike]

This is an army garrison in Kosovo itself. This was a vehicle storage, sustainment, and maintenance facility that's been totally destroyed in Kosovo.

[Photo - Balince Bridge South, Kosovo - Post Strike]

A bridge in southern Kosovo. This span here has dropped into the ravine, and then there's another hole for the bridge here. This is one of the smaller bridges. As I said yesterday, a lot of the lines of communication bridges have been taken down. We continue to do that to ensure that his sustainment in Kosovo is if not restricted, limited in a significant way.

I'm going to show about nine or so of the films from the 77 targets of the last couple of days.

[Begin Video]

First is, as we showed last week, this is a border post along the Kosovo/Albanian border. F-16CG with laser-guided bomb. The pilot is switching back in his imagery from black to white-hot to see which one is best. You'll see under the cursor here, it takes out that border post.

I was talking to some of the intelligence folks that are looking at those border posts. They say there are maybe a couple of dozen, and we continue to take those down.

There's a military vehicle along the Kosovo/Macedonian border itself. That was destroyed. An F-16 with laser-guided bomb.

An anti-aircraft battery in Central Serbia. This is along a bridge, one of the lines of communication, so they're actually putting AAA up by the bridges to defend them. You'll see just next to the bridge is a AAA site. The most important thing you do is try to get that down first; then they'll take the bridge down after that. That was destroyed.

Novi Sad refinery, the picture I just showed you a moment ago. F-16 with laser-guided bomb, 2,000-pound bombs. You'll see four large tanks. It will hit this tank, and the explosion from that bomb will actually take the tank to the right down, and actually after this was over, all four of those tanks were on fire. So there was petroleum in those tanks, and that petroleum is obviously not available anymore.

Some trucks in the Pristina ammunition storage area. Why they're leaving the trucks there is debatable. It may be because they don't have enough fuel to move the trucks. But this F-16, once again, with 2,000 pound bombs, will hit these trucks. All three will be destroyed, and there's large secondaries, so there's probably ammunition in those trucks.

A radio relay site, command and control, in Montenegro on one of the hills or ridge line in Montenegro, to take away his ability to track aircraft and fire at us. An AGM-130 off an F-15E, and you'll see the pilot looks at this black spot initially, and at end game picks up the actual target, moves it over just prior to the impact, and is lucky enough to -- actually professional enough to -- hit the target. That was struck again after that by another bomb, and it was destroyed.

The Cacak ordnance assembly facility. F-16CG with laser-guided bomb again. You can see that it's been struck earlier by the arrow by another aircraft. It's burning. This one goes off, pretty good-sized secondary, and multiple bombs on that particular target.

Another picture of the same facility. Another F-16 with laser-guided bomb. This was on Saturday. As you can see, this is one of the bombs that I showed a minute ago. You can see a large secondary, and this is a lot of ammunition in that building. But once again, it's not available to Milosevic.

There's a military vehicle in a revetment. They're hard to find, but once we find them we go after them. You can see under the cursor where he's aiming here. It actually misses the target by a few feet, but it's close enough that you can see the vehicle is burning and destroyed afterwards.

[End Video]

I believe that's all the film for today.

Q:...77 targets were MUP and VJ? (inaudible) for those MUP and VJ buildings, trucks, people...

Major General Wald: They were buildings, trucks, ammunition storage, APCs, that type of thing. Some tanks.

Q: Were they along the border? Is that the area where they're building up the defensive area? It looked like it on that chart you showed us.

Major General Wald: Some were along the border, and some were internal. Most of those were in Kosovo itself, though. Some were the border posts; some were the actual ammunition storage areas; some were troops in, or congregation points for the VJ and MUP staging areas.

Q: In the past you've led us to believe that they're building a defensive line in there.

Major General Wald: I've never said that, but I have heard that they are -- I've heard some reports where they are building some defenses along the border. It's been in open press, I believe.

Q: Is that what we were attacking?

Major General Wald: No. These are border posts that have been there from before. They're manned up by VJ and MUP. Both police and the VJ itself, and they have some posts that are for monitoring the goings and coming of folks -- mainly the goings, obviously. And there are some that are just actually defensive posts. So we're attacking all of those.

Q: Why do you strike still extensively the last 48 hours, against Pristina...

Major General Wald: I think I didn't hear what you...

Q: Why do you strike extensively Pristina in the last 48 hours?

Major General Wald: There are a lot of VJ and MUP targets in the Pristina area, and where we find them, that's where we'll attack them. If they have more in Pristina, that's where they'll be attacked more of.

Q: So 40 days was not enough for the Air Force to do that?

Major General Wald: Well, 40 days hasn't been enough for Milosevic, evidently. It may be 40 more days or 40 after that. We'll continue to strike his military until it's either destroyed or he quits.

Q: General, it was reported this morning in the briefing from Brussels by Jamie Shea that there were, the MUP, I guess, and the VJ, or one or the other, was using artillery against the internally displaced people that were in the mountains, apparently have been driven up in the mountains, and then they were shelling them. Can you confirm that? And secondly, can you say anything about why Prizren is being emptied or just generally the tactics with regard to the IDPs.

Major General Wald: There were reports of the VJ and MUP shelling the IDPs and the Kosovo Albanians from what I remember at least a year ago. They've continued to do that. That's not new. Why anybody would attack innocent civilians is beyond me in that respect.

The Prizren area, they've moved some IDPs out of some areas; they've moved some back in. So why Milosevic is using these civilians in that way is beyond me. I think you'd have to ask him. But they are moving some IDPs, refugees I should say now, out of Kosovo. They're coming out at the rate of 500 to 1,000 an hour. They continue to move some people back in toward villages. Once again, as a military person, it's beyond my imagination why anybody would do anything like that, so...

Q: Are they trying to annihilate these people? Are they trying to...

Major General Wald: I would...

Q:...they can't go anywhere, go across the border? Or what?

Major General Wald: I think Milosevic is trying to do all of that. I think he has a total disregard for humanity.

Q: General Wald, I'm still a little bit fuzzy -- it's difficult to see exactly how many MUP and VJ forces now that the air war has degraded or destroyed. Do you have any aggregated figures that you can share with us that might clarify that?

Major General Wald: I go back to -- I would defer to General Clark's briefing of maybe a little over a week and a half ago. He gave a good rundown then. I think if you look at over that last ten days or so since he briefed, the cumulative effect, it doesn't take a lot to imagine that he's being degraded in a big way over time. He has a lot of military force. He has a lot of capability. But he's sustaining a large amount of damage and a lot of his forces [are] being destroyed on a daily basis. As the weather stays good and as we increase our operational tempo, it will only increase.

So to sit down and give an actual percentage of what that is would be very difficult, because we are not on the ground counting these things onesie-twosies.

Q: General, I know that you're very limited in what you can say about these weapons that were used to disable the electrical system. They only resulted in, as near as we can tell, a temporary loss of power for most of Yugoslavia. Is it safe to assume that that was the intended result? That that's how these weapons are designed to work?

Major General Wald: I'd answer it this way. I think NATO gave a good explanation today, but I would answer it this way. There are some things militarily -- and I think we're really very open -- that I'm just not going to talk about. There are some things that are classified to the point that from a military perspective wouldn't do anybody any good right now, so I won't even talk about that.

Q: Without discussing anything that you're not supposed to talk about, just talking about the facts that we know now, for instance that Mr. Bacon said that the power was out for seven hours according to reports over there. What's the military utility of so brief a power outage?

Major General Wald: I think anything that degrades Milosevic in any way from a military perspective, command and control, or anything else, and disrupts him for a period of time is beneficial to us militarily.

Q: Let me just ask it the other way. What's the disadvantage of say a more, a strike with more conventional weapons that for instance takes out an entire power plant. Why would you want to do something less, rather than something more devastating? Is there a tradeoff? Is there an advantage? What's the military thinking?

Major General Wald: I think the benefit of your question is exactly what we want Milosevic to think, so I'm not going to answer that.

Q: General, can you tell us a little bit about the CSAR? Did they use Pave Lows and Pave Hawks again? Anything come from a friendly country flying back to a friendly country? Anything at all you can tell us?

Major General Wald: I can tell you that from a pilot's perspective, if it wasn't for them, I'd be a little more worried, and I'm very proud of what they do. But I think, Ivan, if I were to tell you any of that right now, it may give some of our pilots not the same chance that the one that got out the other day would have, so I don't want to talk about that.

Q: Can I just try this another way on the weapons? Without discussing the weapon or even the timing, how long the electricity was locked out? Was the purpose there not to just destroy the electrical grid for good? Was that why the weapon was used, so you wouldn't just completely destroy it?

Major General Wald: There's a lot of reasons we use different weapons for different things with different intent, and it necessarily doesn't have to always be destruction. We've used jamming on different things. We use weapons for various reasons. It may be a tactical reason; it may be a strategic reason. Some of those reasons, obviously, I don't think Milosevic knows, because if you knew, he probably would know because it would be an open literature. So there are some things that we're just not going to talk about. And we do have some things beneficially to us that we do not talk about that Milosevic will have to find out later.

Q: One more, if you'll just bear with me. This morning in the NATO briefing, they made the point that we can turn off their electrical grid or [turn] on their electrical grid on a moment's notice, that we have control over that. Do you have confidence, based on whatever technology you have available to you that you can take out that grid on a moment's notice, virtually at will?

Major General Wald: If we could do anything at a moment's notice, it would be done. Sometimes we overstate things, I think. (Laughter)

Q: Can I get back to my question about the F-16 crash. Do you have any indication of what kind of malfunction there was in the engine and whether, if it's any common thread with the training accidents that happened in the United States?

Major General Wald: From what I understand, there was an engine problem. What it was caused by, I don't know. It's going to be very difficult for us to find out because we don't have the airplane back, so it could have been caused by a normal logistics type maintenance failure -- not maintenance, but a material type failure. Also it could have been caused by him flying into or through something or being hit by something. We don't know that.

So the answer is, is it related to any other engine problem we've had in the past? It's going to be very difficult to find out until we get access to the aircraft.

Q: Talk about the intensity of the SAM activity in the last week or so. Have you seen a trend line, especially over this last weekend, of how they're using it or how often they are firing?

Major General Wald: From what I understand, the last couple of nights has been pretty intense, and the reason for that is speculation. Either it's because -- I think possibly Milosevic feels like he has to be a little more defensive. The intensity of the air campaign has increased significantly over the last few days. So I would suspect, if I were in that situation, I'd probably try to defend myself a lot more with whatever I had.

I think, additionally, you can speculate that with the integrated air defense, although it still is integrated, is not as integrated as it was before. And they may have less of a central control over their weapons, possibly. Therefore, there may be a little more autonomy for people to fire SAMs.

Additionally, we're going after a lot more different targets in a lot more different places. So as we attack those targets, they'll defend themselves. So he has a lot of missiles, SAM missiles, and he's shooting those in a lot of ways, ways that maybe I wouldn't think were very efficient. But the fact of the matter is, he continues to fire away, and over the last few nights it's been in the dozens of SAMs he's fired and a lot of AAA.

Q: Primarily ballistic fires still, or is he risking his base radar?

Major General Wald: He's doing a combination of both, and he's taking some risk. You'd have to speculate why that would be, if he's getting a little more desperate or whatever the case may be.

Q: General, are you suggesting that the F-16 may have been hit by ground fire?

Major General Wald: I'm suggesting that that's certainly a possibility. We have an A-10, as you know, that was struck by AAA or a SAM last night. They're flying around areas where they're flying dozens of SAMs that have the -- when they blow up, they throw fragments of metal in the air. There's lots of AAA; you've seen it on TV. And what you've seen on TV with those tracers is only about one in every six bullets, and that's only what you see on TV. So when that happens, there's always the chance that you could get unlucky and fly through something. So it could very well have been a piece of metal or something else that went through the engine, or it could have been just a materiel failure. The good news is the pilot's back.

Q: When the power was shut down last night to large areas of Serbia, can you say anything about what kind of effect that has on the air defense system? Did that account for why -- does that temporarily blind the...

Major General Wald: As you know, the integrated air defense system needs power to work. So anything that takes down his command and control, his ability to communicate, is going to be beneficial to us, where he can't either see us as well or communicate as well, or he has to run his equipment which takes power. So from a pilot's perspective when we do that type of thing, it makes me feel great.

Q: Do the air defenses not have backup generators or other redundant...

Major General Wald: You would expect some of them to have some backup generators. Now whether they've got those running all the time, and they can get it cranked up in time, that's debatable. But the fact of the matter is, power is like fuel. It's like munitions. It's like things that keep his army going. If he doesn't have power, he doesn't have fuel; he doesn't have ammunition; he doesn't have fuel; all those things will contribute to our objectives of getting him to the point where he either says uncle, or he doesn't have anything to say uncle with.

Q: Last week, I think it was Friday, you or Bacon announced that the Ministry of Defense was one of the targets that was hit. Can you explain why that was struck so late in the campaign? Is there some reason it wasn't struck earlier?

Major General Wald: No, it's just a matter of when the campaign is progressing along and when those targets would be decided upon by SACEUR and his joint targeting board that that's the right time to go ahead and hit that particular target.

Q: I guess what I'm missing here is in how you've explained what you're doing in the campaign, including going after the military structure...

Major General Wald: Let me explain it this way. The first thing we want to do is give ourselves the opportunity to fly without getting shot down. So you want to start building a, either local or maybe more than local air superiority. Then you want to start going after things that would be an immediate problem, and that would be things that could be made more fleeting or sustain his force in the field a little bit more. Then eventually as we go down the road, we'll start taking down his ability to lead and sustain over a period of time.

So there's a lot of reasons for targets being hit at different times. It may be weather; it may be the type of weapon you want to use, but it certainly has a plan of attack, and I don't plan to tell when we're going to hit certain targets, but there's a reason for it.

Q: General, there have been reports that while Chernomyrdin is coming to town with some kind of peace offering, and Jesse Jackson's bringing a letter from Milosevic presumably to sit down and talk with President Clinton about some kind of negotiated settlement. Is there any evidence that he's backing that up in the field in any way? Any evidence that he is reducing or beginning to halt the offensive against the Kosovo refugees or beginning to withdraw any of his forces?

Major General Wald: The only reduction or ceasing of anything we've seen is because he's being bombed or destroyed by air power. So no, I haven't seen any of that, and I haven't heard any of that from SHAPE or anyplace else. So any reduction so far at this point has been because he's being destroyed.

Q: So he's not doing it voluntarily in some kind of peace gesture, in your estimation.

Major General Wald: I haven't seen any of that at all, no.

Q: Can we ask you about the other war, the forgotten war in Iraq? I understand there have been some incidents over the weekend and today, and I understand today that Iraqi forces fired missiles from a civilian area.

Is this a new tactic that they're going to try to prevent the United States and the coalition partners from attacking air defense sites in the north?

Mr. Bacon: Well, they did fire at one of our planes, or they threatened one of our planes from a civilian area. We fired back with a HARM missile, anti-radiation missile, in self-defense. After the missile was fired, we saw that the installation against which it was fired was in a civilian area.

They've been doing this for some time. We have very clear intelligence photos of military equipment parked next to mosques and other civilian buildings. This isn't new. They may be doing more of it. But I can't discern a pattern at this stage. They've been doing this, as I say, for some time off and on.

Q: Didn't Operation NORTHERN WATCH -- did they say that missiles were actually fired at the U.S. planes?

Mr. Bacon: They said they were targeted by radar and fired upon by [an] Iraqi surface-to-air missile.

Q: Were the surface-to-air missile launchers in that civilian area or was that...

Mr. Bacon: I don't know exactly what was there. It was the radar, I believe, that they found in the civilian area, not the missile launcher, but the radar.

Q: (inaudible)

Mr. Bacon: The U.S. missiles were fired at the radar, which had been put in a civilian area.

Q: Did it hit anything other than the radar itself?

Mr. Bacon: I don't think we know at this stage what it hit, but the attack was called off after they saw that the radar was in a civilian area.

Q: Is there any concern that the Iraqis are stepping up these challenges and attacks, seeing that you're occupied elsewhere?

Mr. Bacon: There's no concern that they're stepping up their challenges, because the challenges seem to be episodic, and they go through periods of intensity. We can't explain why there are long down periods with no challenges followed by periods of more rigorous intensity. The reason could be that he's constantly looking for ways to shoot down a U.S. plane, and therefore recalibrating his air defense and other systems better to enable him to do that. That's just speculation.

But the pattern appears to be that he challenges for awhile, we whack him day after day in response to his challenges, then he pulls back and sort of goes down for a period and does nothing. Then he comes back up and presents a new series of challenges. Sometimes slightly different tactics.

One of his tactics now may be to place his air defense systems in civilian neighborhoods thinking that he can challenge us with impunity because he's done that. I think it's not only a risky strategy for him, but for his civilians.

Q: You're not saying that these things that are in civilian neighborhoods are off limits to...

Mr. Bacon: This was not off limits. Obviously, our planes will continue to defend themselves if they're under attack.

Q: I have a question for General Wald primarily, but you too can relate. The A-10, can you tell us what it was going after? When it was hit? Was it over Kosovo? Did it make it back safely? The pilot okay?

Major General Wald: The pilot's okay. It was over Kosovo. It was going after -- I'm not sure exactly the target, but a fielded force of some sort. It was in Skopje, and it was hit by AAA and SAM-type activity.

Q: Are A-10s being used more to actually drop ordnance rather than the observer role as they were before?

Major General Wald: They're doing a lot of both. There's the forward air controller mission, and they actually, the A-10s that go out as forward air controllers, FACs, the only real difference is they do have a pod of marking rockets, smoke rockets, but they still carry ordnance. They have the 30mm gun, and they carry other types of ordnance, so if they find a target -- with their wingman, there's usually two of them -- they can attack a target on their own, or they -- normally the best thing they try to do is try to bring other aircraft in and find targets and have them go in on those.

Q: Is that what this one that was hit was doing?

Major General Wald: It was probably either a FAC or attacking a target, but it was obviously doing one of the two.

Q: General, there's been some concern raised in Europe about the possibility of A-10s using the depleted uranium munitions, especially when they go after the armor. Are we using any of these munitions now against the...

Major General Wald: Yes. And the 30mm on the A-10. I think it's almost -- I've heard that question a lot, and I've been thinking about it. I've been around the A-10s for a long time. I know that I see the munitions handlers put these bullets in the aircraft, holding on to them for 20 years, so they've done a lot of scientific studies on these things, and there doesn't seem to be a problem. So I don't think there's a problem at all with that, and it hasn't been a problem for any of us, so it's kind of old news.

Q: What kind of damage (inaudible)?

Major General Wald: From what I understand, he had some engine problems and a little bit of external damage to the aircraft.

Q: (inaudible) obviously, and landed safely?

Major General Wald: Yes, that's right.

Q: Can I ask a question about Iraq, just following up there? Why did the statement issued by Operation NORTHERN WATCH, EUCOM, [say] that that site in a civilian area was not bombed? In fact it was attacked, but what's the point of saying it wasn't bombed?

Mr. Bacon: It says here that they responded by firing missiles in the first paragraph. In the second paragraph, it says they didn't use bombs.

Q: What's the distinction there?

Mr. Bacon: I'm not sure there is a distinction. There's a distinction -- I mean there clearly is some level of distinction between missiles and bombs, but I explained to you what happened. They were targeted; they were illuminated; they fired a HARM and also an AGM-130 (sic) [no AGM-130 was fired at this site], and then they pulled off the attack, and they didn't come in with other bombs after that.

Q: The implication is that they did the immediate reaction to a SAM launching, which is launch an AGM -- I'm sorry, a HARM -- and possibly other things, but then when it came to do a followup strike on a location you now knew was a SAM, when they looked at it and saw that it was a civilian area, they didn't do it.

Mr. Bacon: What they knew was that there was a radar installation there. That's what they, obviously with the HARM, what they were shooting at, because it follows the radar beam.

Q: They did attack it, right?

Mr. Bacon: Yes, they did. And it says they attacked it with missiles.

Q: Would you say this release misrepresents what happened?

Mr. Bacon: I don't think so. I think the release says that they attacked, that they were threatened, and they responded with missiles. In the second paragraph it says they didn't drop bombs. I assume that reflects the truth here. There is a distinction between missiles and bombs.

Major General Wald: Actually, it's overly accurate.

Q:...didn't drop bombs. They didn't do other things as well. But in the context in which that's written it appears to suggest that they did not attack that site in the civilian area.

Mr. Bacon: Let me just read what it says here, okay?

It says that "aircraft were targeted by Iraq radar and fired upon by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles. Responding in self-defense, U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and F-16CJ Falcons fired AGM-88" -- which is the HARM - "and the AGM-130 missiles at surface-to-air missile sites north of Mosul." Then they went on to say that in addition, F-16C Falcons dropped BGU-12 laser-guided bombs on one of the surface-to-air missile sites.

In the second paragraph it says that when they discovered that -- two Iraqi surface-to-air missiles were launched against coalition aircraft from a site located in a civilian town. It says they did not target this site with bombs. That's what it says.

Q: Was a HARM or were HARMs fired at that site...

Mr. Bacon: Yes, a HARM missile was fired at that site.

Q: The delineation that is, this site was struck, but it was not struck with bombs. It was struck with HARM missiles.

Mr. Bacon: I have to say that this is dancing on the head of a pin.

Q: Well...

Mr. Bacon: This release says in the first paragraph that missiles were fired in self-defense...

Q:...and if we're now supposed to differentiate between a site being struck with bombs and missiles and we need to ask these questions separately, then that should be clear.

Mr. Bacon: If you guys want to bloviate about this release, you can do it all you want, but the fact is it admits that we fired missiles; it says we did not drop bombs in one respect, and I think there's nothing more to say about this than we've talked about...

Q:...appear to you when you read this release, was it clear to you that this other site was struck with HARM missiles, because it said it wasn't struck with bombs?

Mr. Bacon: I think that there's one thing you have to know about this release and one thing you have to know about the incident -- that Iraqi air defense systems targeted our planes and we responded in self defense. That's the story.

Q: I want to make sure that I understand General Wald on one point. The DU shells. Have the A-10s actually been firing them in addition to simply carrying them?

Major General Wald: Yes.

Q: They have been.

Q: Do you have anything on a report that was on the wires about some bombs that, at least according to reports, fell short in a place called Valjevo, excuse my mispronunciation, that the hardware apparently aimed at an ammunition site and seemed to fall short, within a few hundred yards of a hospital?

Major General Wald: I haven't heard that yet. I'll find out and let you know.

Q: Can you update us on the arrangements for the embargo at sea? What's going on with that, and when will that start?

Major General Wald: Mr. Bacon can probably talk to that.

Mr. Bacon: Yeah. They're still working on it. I think the Military Committee -- It went to the NAC, and the NAC sent it back to the Military Committee for more work. It will probably take another day or two before it's finished.

Q: Has there been any increase in shipments through the port of Bar while this is being deliberated upon?

Mr. Bacon: Not that I'm aware of. What you have to know is that the European Union embargo, which is subscribed to now by about 30 countries, went into effect on Friday. Also we issued new regulations barring the export of most products -- I think food and medicine is excluded -- into Bar or Montenegro as well on Friday. So there's been a significant change in the regulatory environment, and NATO will continue to work out the details of the visit and search regime.

Q:...command and control in Serbia since day one, and again, the telephone system is still working. Why is that not considered part of the command and control system?

Mr. Bacon: Some of it's still working, not all of it.

Q: A question on the first targeting map. There were a whole series of mobility targets in sort of west central Serbia seeming to go along in lines. Are those fuel tankers on highways, or what are they?

Major General Wald: What was the first part of the question?

Q: On your first targeting map it shows a lot of...

Major General Wald: Those were lines of communication.

Q: It's all, it's sort of not just in one place, but it's all along...

Major General Wald: As you can see, those are the lines of communication going into Kosovo primarily, and we'll continue to move on all of those lines. You're talking about right here?

Q: Yeah, I am. It almost looks like the rail lines from where the railway goes into Bosnia, and then goes on to Kosovo?

Major General Wald: Some of those lines of communication go various places. What we're saying, as we said before, is we're going to cut out his ability to -- some of those may go this way and then drop back down toward Kosovo after they get across the bridge. It depends on where the bridge needs to be, because the river doesn't always run straight east and west or south and north. So the line there may just happen to go along where a river or something else is. That's normally what a bridge would be over.